• Home
    • Get the Podcasts
    • About
      • Contact Latinopia.com
      • Copyright Credits
      • Production Credits
      • Research Credits
      • Terms of Use
      • Teachers Guides
  • Art
    • LATINOPIA ART
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Film/TV
    • LATINOPIA CINEMA
    • LATINOPIA SHOWCASE
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Food
    • LATINOPIA FOOD
    • COOKING
    • RESTAURANTS
  • History
    • LATINOPIA EVENT
    • LATINOPIA HERO
    • TIMELINES
    • BIOGRAPHY
    • EVENT PROFILE
    • MOMENT IN TIME
    • DOCUMENTS
    • TEACHERS GUIDES
  • Lit
    • LATINOPIA WORD
    • LATINOPIA PLÁTICA
    • LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW
    • PIONEER AMERICAN LATINA AUTHORS
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Music
    • LATINOPIA MUSIC
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Theater
    • LATINOPIA TEATRO
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Blogs
    • Angela’s Photo of the Week
    • Arnie & Porfi
    • Bravo Road with Don Felípe
    • Burundanga Boricua
    • Chicano Music Chronicles
    • Fierce Politics by Dr. Alvaro Huerta
    • Mirándolo Bien with Eduado Díaz
    • Political Salsa y Más
    • Mis Pensamientos
    • Latinopia Guest Blogs
    • Tales of Torres
    • Word Vision Harry Gamboa Jr.
    • Julio Medina Serendipity
    • ROMO DE TEJAS
    • Sara Ines Calderon
    • Ricky Luv Video
    • Zombie Mex Diaries
    • Tia Tenopia
  • Podcasts
    • Louie Perez’s Good Morning Aztlán
    • Mark Guerrero’s Chicano Music Chronicles
      • Yoga Talk with Julie Carmen

latinopia.com

Latino arts, history and culture

  • Home
    • Get the Podcasts
    • About
      • Contact Latinopia.com
      • Copyright Credits
      • Production Credits
      • Research Credits
      • Terms of Use
      • Teachers Guides
  • Art
    • LATINOPIA ART
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Film/TV
    • LATINOPIA CINEMA
    • LATINOPIA SHOWCASE
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Food
    • LATINOPIA FOOD
    • COOKING
    • RESTAURANTS
  • History
    • LATINOPIA EVENT
    • LATINOPIA HERO
    • TIMELINES
    • BIOGRAPHY
    • EVENT PROFILE
    • MOMENT IN TIME
    • DOCUMENTS
    • TEACHERS GUIDES
  • Lit
    • LATINOPIA WORD
    • LATINOPIA PLÁTICA
    • LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW
    • PIONEER AMERICAN LATINA AUTHORS
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Music
    • LATINOPIA MUSIC
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Theater
    • LATINOPIA TEATRO
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Blogs
    • Angela’s Photo of the Week
    • Arnie & Porfi
    • Bravo Road with Don Felípe
    • Burundanga Boricua
    • Chicano Music Chronicles
    • Fierce Politics by Dr. Alvaro Huerta
    • Mirándolo Bien with Eduado Díaz
    • Political Salsa y Más
    • Mis Pensamientos
    • Latinopia Guest Blogs
    • Tales of Torres
    • Word Vision Harry Gamboa Jr.
    • Julio Medina Serendipity
    • ROMO DE TEJAS
    • Sara Ines Calderon
    • Ricky Luv Video
    • Zombie Mex Diaries
    • Tia Tenopia
  • Podcasts
    • Louie Perez’s Good Morning Aztlán
    • Mark Guerrero’s Chicano Music Chronicles
      • Yoga Talk with Julie Carmen
You are here: Home / Blogs / TALES OF TORRES 8.31.15 “MAKING SURE POLICE PROTECT AND SERVE”

TALES OF TORRES 8.31.15 “MAKING SURE POLICE PROTECT AND SERVE”

August 31, 2015 by Breht Burri

MAKING SURE POLICE ACTUALLY “PROTECT AND SERVE”

It’s been a year since the killing of Michael Brown by a cop in Ferguson, Missouri set off a firestorm of rage and demonstrations. It gave rise to the “Black Lives Matter” movement. (All lives matter, of course.) This has been a summer of case after case of police shooting and killing unarmed men of color. African Americans and Latinos are violently abused by police across this country every single day. But not every incident is caught on camera. That may be changing with the growing requirement that police departments provide body cams and increase the use of cameras on patrol cars. One hopes those moves will reduce the carnage, but there’s also the very real possibility that some unscrupulous cops will monkey with the cameras at the appropriate time in order not to have their “out of policy” actions recorded on tape.

Among all of the incidents of cop shootings this summer, one particular case caught my eye because of its potential significance. This is the caught-on-tape incident of University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing shooting and killing Samuel Dubose after a seemingly routine traffic stop. This is noteworthy for two reasons. One: the head-spinning swiftness with which prosecutors investigated the case and actually charged officer Tensing with murder. He’s accused of murdering Dubose, an unarmed African American driver who was stopped and questioned by Tensing on a Cincinnati street. That’s astonishing, for several reasons. And secondly: the case is significant because it triggers a look at what differences – if any – there are between municipal police departments and university cops. Are the standards different? Is the training of university cops different from that of municipal or state police? I looked into that.

A body camera the Tensing was wearing caught the whole incident in Cincinnati. Usually in cases such as this, there’s a long protracted process of “internal review” by police, followed by an investigation by prosecutors. It usually takes a long time. And, history shows, the authorities hem and haw and ultimately, through twisted logic that strains credulity, claim that the fatal shooting was unfortunate but “within police policy.” In other words, the cop did nothing wrong. That’s usually how these cases proceed. Not so, in the case of Cincinnati University police officer Ray Tensing.

It’s instructive to take a second look at what the prosecutor said in releasing the tape to the public and in quickly concluding that a murder charge was in order. Cops are very, very rarely charged with murdering someone while on duty. When I first heard of it the day it occurred, I thought surely that hell must have frozen over. It seemed unbelievable. Hamilton County prosecutor Joseph Deters was emphatic and unequivocal. At a news conference he said the crime was “a senseless and asinine shooting.” He added, “This is without question a murder.” The prosecutor explained that the officer lied about supposedly being dragged by the car Dubose was driving. He lied about being threatened by Dubose. The prosecutor added: “I think he was making an excuse for the purposeful killing of another person… he should never have been a police officer.” You never hear angry words like that from a prosecutor.

The fact that the district attorney’s office acted so swiftly and decisively still has me shaking my head. And surely I’m not alone. And the fact that this happened has to be a byproduct of the activism that’s occurred over these many months to protest the killings of Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Christian Taylor, Darius Graves, Walter Scott – and the list goes on and on. Where I live in Southern California there are the recent police shootings of unarmed men, which include Charlie Keunang and Ezell Ford. On and on. The people are holding the authorities’ feet to the fire.

Tensing will have his day in court in Cincinnati. His lawyer maintains he did nothing “out of policy” or illegal.

LAPD-Badge

We need police to defend out communities.

Communities must continue to organize and continue to apply pressure on the authorities to “do the right thing.” And police departments – and public officials who presumably govern the activities of police – have to carefully reexamine how they do business. It would be foolish to say that all police departments and all cops are somehow evil and intent on violently oppressing people of color. That is way too broad a brush. Police departments, obviously, serve a valuable function. But they must be structured so as to preclude wantonly violently excessive behavior on the part of their officers.

Being a cop is a tough job. But it’s a job that must be done responsibly, within the law. Most cops, one hopes, are decent people. But some are demonstrably not. And the rules and guidelines have to make sure bad cops don’t use their “color of authority” to act as if they were members of the Klan.

Police departments need to reevaluate their recruitment and training policies. And civilian review boards have to be established in order to constantly monitor the activities of potentially rogue cops. And those boards need to have the legal teeth to do the job.

University-Police1_200

Ray Tensing was a member of the Cincinnati University police force.

But another issue arises from the Tensing case. Tensing was not a municipal cop, but a member of the Cincinnati University police force. It turns out, there can be a world of difference between the training and monitoring of university cops, compared to, shall we say, standard municipal police. There is a range of professionalism at work here.

I discovered that some college police agencies are not much better than your run-of-the-mill “security” team. Mall cops. The qualifications are minimal. The training is not extensive. But that’s not always the case. If a campus security force actually uses the term “police department” or “department of public safety” – rather than “campus security” it must adhere to certain mandatory legal requirements. It has to be on a par with, say, the Los Angeles Police Department or the California Highway Patrol.

University-Police3_200

If a university has a genuine “police department,” it has to adhere to the basic standards of municipal or state police departments.

A university police department – such as the department at Cincinnati University – has to be a genuine “police department.” And it has to adhere to the basic standards of municipal or state police departments. That means the requirements for applicants and the training for those accepted has to be commensurate with those of regular city or state police departments. Most campus police officers in such departments actually train at the academy of the region’s sheriff’s department or local police force. Thus, a campus police officer should be as qualified – and as responsible – as a “regular” cop.

That’s certainly a step in the right direction, but we’ve seen, of course, that even “regular” cops need better training than they are apparently getting. Otherwise, why would we have this nefarious cavalcade of cases of deadly excessive force? Questions have been raised about why Cincinnati’s Tensing was doing his police work outside the campus of Cincinnati University. Those and other questions may be answered when Tensing has his day in court. But meanwhile, all police departments would do well to closely reexamine whom they hire and how they train those men and women who have the power of the badge and the gun. It’s often the power of life and death.

____________________________________________

Copyright 2015 by Luis R. Torres. University police photos copyrighted by Barrio Dog Productions, Inc. All other photos in the public domain.

Filed Under: Blogs, Tales of Torres Tagged With: Luis R.. Torres, Michael Brown, Police shootings, Ray Tensing, Tales of Torres, University Police

POLITICAL SALSA Y MÁS with SAL BALDENEGRO 01.17.21 “DECENCY IS NOT TRANSACTIONAL”

January 17, 2021 By Tia Tenopia

Decency is not transactional… Again, by your leave, I’m going to deviate from my usual diet of politics and such and focus on a topic that is more personal, more intimate, yet just as important as (community-based or partisan) politics: gratitude. As I look around today’s political landscape, I see more enmity than friendliness. This […]

RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT 1.23.21 THE MCNAY ART MUSEUM EXHIBIT

January 23, 2021 By Tia Tenopia

Latino Art: The Joy of Collecting and Giving In mid-January 2021 the McNay Art Museum opened an exhibit of Latino prints featuring the works of Richard Duardo, John Valadez, Cesar Martinez, Raul Caracoza, Melanie Cervantes, Juan Miguel Ramos, John Valadez, Barbara Carrasco, and Juan Mora. We took a special interest in its opening since nearly […]

FIERCE POLITICS with DR. ALVARO HUERTA 1.17.21 “THE WHITE NATIONALIST BARBARIANS STORM THE GATE(S) OF THE U.S. CAPITAL”

January 17, 2021 By Tia Tenopia

“The White Nationalist Barbarians Storm the Gate(s) of the U.S. Capitol” The white nationalist barbarians, aided and abetted by their Führer—President Donald J. Trump—stormed and entered the gate(s) at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, January 6, 2021. The seditionists include those who brazenly entered the so-called people’s house,[1] responsible for death, destruction and mayhem, along […]

BURUNDANGA BORICUA DEL ZOCOTROCO 1.23.21 “CRISIS DE LA ESPERANZA- PARTE III”

January 23, 2021 By Tia Tenopia

Burundanga de Zocotroco Crisis de la Esperanza Parte III Educación y Desesperanza La primera parte de este largo ensayo propone el diagnostico de desesperanza y presenta la evidencia demográfica como primera argumentación. La segunda parte aborda la dimensión económica, en esta tercer parte se enfoca la educación, por ser vehículo de movilidad social y aspecto […]

More Posts from this Category

New On Latinopia

LATINOPIA ART SONIA ROMERO 2

By Tia Tenopia on October 20, 2013

Sonia Romero is a graphic artist,muralist and print maker. In this second profile on Sonia and her work, Latinopia explores Sonia’s public murals, in particular the “Urban Oasis” mural at the MacArthur Park Metro Station in Los Angeles, California.

Category: Art, LATINOPIA ART

LATINOPIA ART SONIA ROMERO 1

By Tia Tenopia on October 7, 2013

Sonia Romero is a graphic artist, muralist and print maker. The daughter of Chicano art pioneer Frank Romero, she has boldly set out on her own artistic trajectory. Her art includes stunning prints, canvases and public murals. Latinopia visited Sonia at her studio in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles where she spoke about […]

Category: Art, LATINOPIA ART

LATINOPIA ART GASPAR ENRÍQUEZ 1 “RETROSPECTIVE”

By Tia Tenopia on May 4, 2014

Gaspar Enríquez is a renowned Chicano artist whose airbrush portraits of barrio youth are haunting and memorable. Drawing from museums and collectors around the United States, in April 2014, the El Paso Museum of Art mounted a retrospective of Gaspar’s art titled Metaphors of the Barrio. Latinopia visited the exhibit and asked Gaspar what inspires […]

Category: Art, LATINOPIA ART

© 2021 latinopia.com · Pin It - Genesis - WordPress · Admin